


i found a light inside me, i want to let it glow

by eynn



Series: i can't go back and lose it all [8]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Asexual Luminara Unduli, Asexual Obi-Wan Kenobi, Fix-It, Gen, Nobody Dies, Order 66, anyway a bunch of people are cool with a bunch of stuff really quickly, demi shmi and plo, obi-wan has a panic attack just warning people it's not graphic and his friends help him, sith!jedi order, the clones may have made a mistake putting all their jetii together, the jedi finally all get together and finally use their words, you can pry crechemaster shmi skywalker from my undead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: Obi-Wan wakes up in the Temple infirmary.At first, he thinks the last thing he remembers – being sneak-attacked by a syringe-wielding Cody – was just a dream. Perhaps he was injured on a mission, or got sick, and hallucinated it all.The memory of their planning in the mindscape comes back and hits Obi-Wan like a star destroyer.
Relationships: CC-1004 | Gree/Luminara Unduli, CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-5052 | Bly/Aayla Secura, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker, Plo Koon/Shmi Skywalker
Series: i can't go back and lose it all [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1658362
Comments: 23
Kudos: 1147





	i found a light inside me, i want to let it glow

Obi-Wan wakes up in the Temple infirmary.

At first, he thinks the last thing he remembers – being sneak-attacked by a syringe-wielding Cody – was just a dream. Perhaps he was injured on a mission, or got sick, and hallucinated it all.

Cody would totally ambush him and force him to nap, though, he admits.

Then Obi-Wan lifts his head a little and looks around. Anakin, Plo, Aayla, Luminara, Barriss, Shaak. They’re all there with him, sleeping on beds clustered in the room. Master Yoda is sitting on a chair at Aayla’s side, his clawed hand on hers.

He senses Obi-Wan stirring and turns towards him, ears perking.

The memory of their planning in the mindscape comes back and hits Obi-Wan like a star destroyer.

“Don’t let Anakin wake up!” he croaks, struggling to sit up, struggling to speak through a mouth that feels full of cotton. “Don’t let him wake up! He’s got a mind leech. The Sith Lord will know we’ve found it if he wakes up.”

Yoda looks grave and slides off his chair to cross to Anakin’s bed and climb up onto it. He holds a hand over his forehead and then his posture relaxes.

“Sleep, he will, for many hours,” he says, and begins to climb down and make his way over to Obi-Wan. “First to wake, you are, Obi-Wan. To find you unharmed, glad I am.”

Obi-Wan takes the glass of water Yoda floats over to him and downs most of it in one go. “The clones got us,” he says. “With those special knockouts Kix invented for when Anakin won’t sleep.”

Yoda chuckles at that, but Obi-Wan has no idea what he means.

“They must have kept us under for days. We were all the way out on the Rim, so were Plo and Luminara. Shaak was on Kamino.”

“Eight hours ago, delivered you were. Escorted by Commander Rex and Commander Wolffe and Commander Bly your stretchers were. With child, Aayla is? Glad I am to hear it.”

“She, yeah, she thought she might be,” Obi-Wan says blankly.

“Feel the little one in the Force I can.” Yoda smiles, having made his way to sit on the foot of Obi-Wan’s bed. “Most insistent that she be cared for appropriately, Commander Bly was.”

Something is off. Obi-Wan looks around warily and then knows what it is. “Where’s Master Che and rest of the healers? Why haven’t they descended on me by now?”

The troubled look returns to Yoda’s face. “Evacuated, they have, along with the younglings and padawans. To where, I do not know. Safer, it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“Trapped inside here five days ago we were by the clones. No communication we could make, until you were delivered. Away the younglings and the sick went then, to safety in hiding. Surrounded by clones the Temple is. Surrounded by clones the Senate is.” Yoda hesitates. “Making speeches, the Chancellor has been.”

“Speeches?”

“Saying the Jedi have turned traitor and have been destroyed, he is.”

“What?”

Yoda shakes his head. “Strong in the Force when together the clones are. Weak they are when alone but together, strong. Deceive the Sith Lord they have.”

“I don’t understand.” A horrible suspicion is growing in Obi-Wan’s mind.

“Loyal they were, to us, when the Sith Lord ordered them to kill. Someone close to the Chancellor he is. Deceive him, resist his order, they have managed.” His ears go flat. “Allow us to assist them in killing the Sith Lord, they will not.” He snorts. “Foolish children. Die, they will.”

Obi-Wan lunges and manages to sit up. Being unconscious for the better part of a week has made him stiff and tired. “Where’s Cody?”

“Know this I do not.” Yoda moves forward and peers into his eyes. “Afraid of yourself, you should not be.”

Obi-Wan blinks. “What?”

“Afraid of loss you are always. Hold you back from living, it does.”

There is a tap on the door, and Crechemaster Skywalker enters. Behind her is Senator Amidala, Padmé, visibly pregnant and wearing a set of Jedi robes.

Shmi Skywalker goes to sit at her son’s side, and holds his hand. Padmé sinks into the chair Yoda pulls over for her and sighs.

“Thank you, Master Yoda,” she says, inclining her head. Somehow she manages to make being twice her usual size look graceful. “What happened, Obi-Wan? Did the men kidnap you too?”

“They knocked us out and brought us all here from the front lines, or from Kamino, for Shaak,” he answers. “What do you mean, kidnap?”

She shrugs. “I was woken up in the middle of the night by Commander Fox and about a hundred troopers at my door, telling me to pack a bag and come with them before I was killed. Sabé and Rabé and I were hurried out of my apartment and brought here.”

“Just before you arrived, they did,” Yoda adds.

“They had us hide on one of the ships, and then in the middle of last night, we were brought here,” she finishes. “I don’t know what’s going on. They wouldn’t tell us anything.”

“Where are Sabé and Rabé now?” Obi-Wan asks.

“Rabé is sleeping, and Sabé is taking a turn on watch at the gates,” Padmé answers. “How are you feeling? You were all so still when they brought you in.”

“It’s just the special Jedi knockout Kix invented. It’s potent enough to make us sleep for longer than an hour or two. Basically, it’s a sleeping drug scaled up for our healing factors.”

“Oh, that’s good to know.” She looks over at Anakin.

Obi-Wan winces. “We can’t wake him up yet.”

“Why not?”

“He, er, the Sith Lord has gotten into his head somehow and planted a leech there. It’s making him have false memories and it’s altered some of his perception of how people treat him and where they are.”

She stares at him, her eyes round and her face draining of color.

“He’s apparently been having very violent dreams of you dying in childbirth,” Obi-Wan says slowly. He’s trying to remember all that Aayla told them when she had examined Anakin’s mind in the dreamscape. She wasn’t a healer by any means, but she had had experience with the more cruel parts of the Dark Side and had learned much about the mental trauma it could cause to protect herself from any further exposure. “They were planted, and made to look like Force visions.”

Yoda makes a strange clicking sound. “Abhorrent, that is. Deserves to suffer that no one does.”

“He was made to believe that the entire Council and most of the Order has hated, resented, and feared him since he arrived. He has memories of me reacting in . . . ugly ways to various small things he chose to confide in me, that certainly did not happen the way he thinks they did.” Obi-Wan stops to gather his courage. “He has a deeply embedded and traumatic memory of you dying on Tattooine at the hands of some Tusken raiders, and subsequently slaughtering their entire camp and feeding on the darkest parts of the Dark Side while doing it,” he says, looking at Shmi. “He has almost no memory of you beyond when he left Tattooine with Master Qui-Gon and myself. It’s been – well, shredded is how Aayla described it.”

Shmi’s fingers tighten around her son’s, and she sighs. “I suspected something was wrong years ago,” she admits. “He came to see me less and less often, and seemed distracted when he did so.” She smooths a stray strand of hair out of Anakin’s ear. “I didn’t want to pry. It only made him upset, almost sick, when I did, and I thought that perhaps it was natural that he was growing up and becoming independent. I didn’t want to hold him back from that.”

Padmé curls up as much as she can in the chair and is biting nervously at her fingers. Tears are slowly sliding down her face.

“I think that was the Sith Lord’s influence,” Obi-Wan says.

“Useful, that is. When it all began, we have a better idea of now.” Yoda frowns. “A plan of decades, this has been.”

“Is – does – will?”

They turn to look at Padmé.

“Will it have harmed our child?” she whispers.

Obi-Wan and Yoda trade helpless glances.

“It depends on who the Sith Lord is and if you have been in contact with him, and if he wants to use your child for something,” Obi-Wan says at last. He sees no point in offering her false platitudes. “I don’t think it would somehow transfer from Anakin to the child, even if the child turns out to be Force-sensitive.”

Padmé nods and digs in the pockets of her robe for a tissue. He notices now that it’s one of Anakin’s old ones, from when he was a young padawan.

She’s so _small_. For a moment he worries that Anakin’s fear of her dying in childbirth isn’t a false vision after all.

“I’m sorry,” she apologizes, blowing her nose. “I can’t control these stupid mood swings. I’ve been doing so well at it.”

Yoda sends out a tendril of the Force to curl around her and calm her. “Apologize, you will not,” he says sternly. “A child you are making. Your priority that is. Endure a little anger and sadness, we can. Feel guilt over it, you should not.”

Padmé blows her nose again a little more vigorously and pulls the robe partially over her head, enveloping herself in it. Shmi sends her a look full of worry, affection, and commiseration.

“Who is the Sith Lord?” she asks. “It must be someone Anakin knows?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan says. “Unfortunately, he knows a lot of people, and I don’t know who all of them are. The Sith can also cloak his Force signature, or we would have sensed him long ago. That’s just common sense to deduce.”

“What else can we deduce, as you say, from what he has done?”

Obi-Wan runs his fingers through his beard. “The Sith Lord is male, and has some influence over the Senate. We know this from information provided by Dooku, which we could sense was genuine at the time he gave it. Anakin knows the Sith Lord by whatever his other persona is. He might be posing as an aide to someone in the Senate, not necessarily be a Senator, though that’s possible too. Really, the only Senator we can clear is Padmé.”

“Bail and Riyo,” she objects.

Obi-Wan gives her a helpless shrug. “But we can’t know for certain that they aren’t playing a long game, Padmé. I don’t want to think Bail could be a Sith either, but we must leave no one out.”

“What about Riyo?”

“Male,” Shmi reminds her. Padmé rolls her eyes.

“People can change genders or shift between them, you know. All that had to have been happening for you to sense that Dooku was telling you the truth was for the Sith Lord to have been male the last time he saw him. It would even make sense for the Sith to be male while being the Sith Lord and another gender while not.”

There’s a silence.

“Kriff,” says Obi-Wan.

Yoda nods.

“We do know something else about him,” Shmi says slowly. “He has a position of influence in the Senate, but he also has some influence over or has somehow gotten into the security of the Republic’s army.”

“What do you mean?” Padmé asks.

“The clones all received an order from this Sith Lord, didn’t they? And they’re treating it as if it overrides anything you say to them. They clearly love you all; I know they think of you as their family. Why won’t they listen?”

“A good point, that is,” Yoda says. “Thought of that, I had not.”

“We can go in circles about this for hours,” Obi-Wan says, a little more sharply than he means to. “It’s no use getting worked up about it when we don’t have enough information.”

Shmi nods, and then turns her head quickly. A soft smile spreads over her face, and she tucks Anakin’s hand back under the blanket and goes to stand by Plo’s side.

Obi-Wan feels the little tug in the Force that is Plo checking out his surroundings a second later.

“Shmi,” is Plo’s first word as he takes her hand to help him sit up. “You’re safe. I am glad.”

“I’m glad Wolffe brought you back here,” she says, and they embrace.

Obi-Wan and Yoda stare at them, confused. Padmé is crying again, but she is smiling.

“They’re so cute together,” she whispers.

“Plo and – Shmi?” Obi-Wan answers.

“Of course! They’ve been dating for five years. Didn’t you know?”

Obi-Wan shakes his head. He can see how they’d be attracted to each other, now that he thinks about it. They’re both steady and calm and have an unstoppable instinct to nurture anyone who crosses their path, but where Plo is quiet and solid, Shmi is soft and stern.

Plo rests his chin on the top of Shmi’s head as he sits beside her on the edge of his bed. “I had planned to leave the Order after this war was done, to marry and teach our adopted vod’e to survive in peacetime,” he says. “I am sensing that leaving may not be necessary, now, Master?”

He’s looking at Yoda.

Yoda nods slowly. “Held a Council meeting, we did, when we were first locked in. Of some long-secret things, we spoke. Glad am I that we did.” He climbs off Obi-Wan’s bed and strides over to Plo, tapping him on the knee. “Of the reputation of the Jedi now, we spoke. Bad it is. Soldiers and Senate servants we have become.” He thumps his stick on the ground. “No more, we vowed. Even if on the Dark we have begun to draw, power we do not seek. Pain we do not want to cause. Dominion we do not want. To each other swear this in the Force we did.” He closes his eyes and when he opens them again, he gazes up at Plo, who looks shocked for a moment before a smile like a sunrise spreads over his face. “Too far into the Light we have gone. Unhealthy, it has been. For the Force to flow well balance there must be.”

Obi-Wan watches in horrified fascination as Yoda turns to him, and his eyes are Sith-yellow.

“Attached to my identical children I am. Love them I do. Love all my padawans I do. All my fellow Force-users who seek pain and power do not. Shame in this, I no longer feel.”

“Trying so hard to feel neutral meant that we tried to feel nothing, and so we have withered into cold, callous mockeries of what we should be,” Plo rumbles, so soft it’s almost a whisper. “We feel the Force around us every minute, loving us, questioning us, always curious and passionate. We have stopped viewing it as a gift and started treating it as an unfeeling tool.”

“Well said, Master Plo,” says Yoda. “Masters Tiin, Mundi, Windu, and Fisto, agree with me, do.”

Obi-Wan thinks of their long conversation in the dreamscape, as they took turns cradling Anakin on their laps and talked about everything and nothing. How Aayla loved Bly, and how Luminara loved Gree, but Aayla was very happy to have sex with Bly, and he with her, but neither Luminara or Gree were interested in sex, but loved each other as mates nonetheless.

How they all thought that that was perfectly fine, and as long as mates respected each other’s boundaries, there was no real reason why Jedi couldn’t have relationships, was there? Just some ancient Code that had been revised more times than they could name, except for in the last few hundred years. And was it even working? They were unhappier and weaker than ever.

How Barriss loved someone she would not name, and had been struggling against rage and fear of admitting that she wanted to love them openly but had felt something, or someone, telling her that the Order would abandon her for it. Luminara’s protective fury over her former padawan being targeted by the Sith Lord, and how they had noticed for the first time that her eyes were flaring yellow as she pulled Barriss into an embrace.

Plo’s easy admission that he too had Fallen, but for his 104th’s sake, and the way he had held up his head and flexed his claws in silent challenge for any of them to dare attack him for wanting to protect his children. Aayla’s quick agreement. Shaak’s smirk as she admitted to Falling before any of them had as she watched children culled on Kamino and felt fury and love rise in her in equal measure until she could bear it no longer. Barriss’ admission that she had come so close to Falling into fear, but had clung to her Master’s steady reassurance and, yes, her open love as a mother after she had Fallen. How she had then Fallen with love, just like the rest of them.

All of them had been yellow-eyed by the time they had finished spilling out their stories, talking quickly, over and under and across each other, repeating and adding and clarifying with a sort of desperate relief to finally be saying it, and pure joy at being listened to.

Everyone but him. What could he add? He’d felt none of that.

Obi-Wan gestures around the room. “All of us ended up in a connected mindscape, through Anakin, somehow, while we were sleeping,” he says. “We ended up talking a lot, though Anakin passed out not very long into it because of the mind leech.” He takes a breath. “All of us are Sith, except me. I know Anakin is. He has been for a while, but he wasn’t hurting anyone, and I – I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t bear losing –” He makes a tiny useless gesture. “Not Anakin, too.”

“Wrong we were to consider only his strength in the Force,” Yoda says tactfully, after it’s clear Obi-Wan isn’t going to be talking more anytime soon. “The strength of his heart, consider we should have. More intensely than anyone has he always felt. If the Chosen One is true, then follow his example we should, for bring balance, that will.”

“Isn’t that what’s already happening?” Shmi asks from where she’s still tucked under Plo’s arm, leaning her head on his shoulder. “You’re all starting to actually work through and talk through your feelings instead of shoving them away or bottling them up, and you’re feeling better and getting things done because of it.”

Yoda laughs. “Wise you are, Master Shmi.”

Obi-Wan doesn’t pay much attention to what they say for a while, because he’s too busy drowning in his own guilt.

He didn’t notice Anakin Falling. He didn’t notice Ahsoka Falling far harder. He didn’t even notice Anakin was in a relationship with Padmé until they’d been married nearly a year! That was unacceptable. How had he cared so little about his padawan? Padmé clearly made him so happy and calm. He hadn’t even bothered to find out what made Anakin happy beyond the very basic and obvious.

Qui-Gon had asked him to look after Anakin as his dying words. The least he could have done was try a little to obey them.

He jumps as arms wrap around his shoulders and he’s pulled into a hug. Shaak Ti holds him close and lets him cry on her shoulder.

 _This is what Ahsoka could have become, and I let her down,_ he thinks. It isn’t a helpful thought.

Slowly he makes sense of the words she is softly chanting to him.

“Anakin is safe, we will remove the mind leech, we will kill the Sith Lord. Anakin is safe, Obi-Wan. Padmé is safe. Ahsoka’s Fall was not your fault. You did everything you could to help her. We won’t abandon her. We won’t disown Anakin for Falling. Ahsoka is not your fault. Anakin is safe.”

She pauses.

“And I would like to travel back in time and slap the shit out of Qui-Gon for being such a bantha-headed little bastard, leaving you with such words as those.”

The shock of hearing that makes him laugh, and he snorts unattractively into her robes. She smiles, he can feel it where her cheek rests on his head, and she hands him a tissue that Padmé has passed over.

“Thank you,” he says, sitting up, an embarrassed flush rising on his face. He must have been broadcasting, his shields useless against someone who had spent so much time in his mindscape so recently.

Oh, Force, that probably means everyone in the room who’d been there heard all that.

“Honestly I’m surprised you haven’t gone insane before now,” Padmé says. She’s scooted her chair closer, or someone has, and she’s got a hand on his knee. Both of his own hands have been clutching at Shaak’s robes. He tries to uncurl them, but she puts her hands over them when it’s hard for him to move them.

“Leave it,” she soothes. “I don’t mind.” Her lekku flex, reassuring him that she is speaking the truth.

Warmth wraps around his back and he finds Luminara leaning her chin on his shoulder, sitting tucked up behind him, her arms under his and around him.

“It’s unnatural for us to never feel,” she says. “All of us played at being perfect during the day, but in our padawan quarters, we let ourselves feel and process. I always thought you did, too.”

Obi-Wan slowly shakes his head.

“There’s no shame in it,” she says. “That’s why we’re here. That’s why we all live together in this Temple, to support each other. What use is it, otherwise? We are aliit.” She hesitates. “Please, do not be offended if I have badly misunderstood this. We will get through this. We will kill the Sith Lord, and we will do it before our cyare’se come to harm. I will remove the stones from the walls with my bare hands before I let him harm Gree.” She lifts her head a little, and Obi-Wan is suddenly and sharply reminded of the days when they were in the creche together, he and her and Bant and Kit. How they would pile together on days one of them was feeling down or sad or lonely.

“But I won’t have to do it alone, will I? Because you will be alongside me, working to save Cody.”

“I’m not –” The automatic horrified denial begins to roll off his tongue, but he stops.

Obi-Wan realizes with a jolt that he has no idea what exactly he feels for his Commander. Just that he’s pretty sure that if Cody died, part of him would die too.

He doesn’t want sex. He’s always known that. It’s just not interesting and he sees no point to it, and it makes him mildly uncomfortable. But a relationship, one where they hug, and occasionally kiss, and share a bed? Having someone to come back to, who shares his quarters and life and hope and misery?

Oh, he wants that with all his heart, and somehow he can’t picture anyone else there beside him but Cody.

“Yes,” he says. “I think – more like you than Aayla, but. Yes.”

Luminara nods, and Shaak squeezes his hand where she still has hers over his. “Then let’s get ready to start breaking out of this place.”

Obi-Wan finally lifts his head and looks around. Everyone has woken by now except Anakin. Someone’s hooked an IV up to Anakin, probably to keep slowly feeding him sedative. He’s pretty sure he recognizes the bags. Shmi is sitting beside his bed again, but she’s holding Plo’s hand. Padmé has moved to a bed beside Anakin and looks exhausted. Aayla is sitting on the foot of her bed, turning her lightsaber over and over in her hands. She looks faintly annoyed but seems calm.

The rest of them are standing in a loose circle. Kit and Ki-Adi and Saesee and Mace have come in at some point, and it looks like they’re joining the rest of them in drawing up a battle plan. Sabé and Rabé have come as well. Barriss is in the center of the circle, waving her hands animatedly.

“I believe my daughter is planning for us to crawl out some of the truly ancient maintenance shafts,” Luminara says, and her laugh shivers against his ribs and warms him to the bone.

How long has it been since someone laughed with him like that, free and open and as unconditional friends?

Obi-Wan takes a deep breath and scrubs at his eyes one last time with the quite soggy tissue.

“Then we’d better join them.”


End file.
